# Retrospective Planning By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2023-09-11 People, in one way or another, plan. For near-term execution, people make to-do lists. For long-term, strategic projects, people make a strategy. Whether near or far, planning for the future provides a structure of coherence. People don’t tend to plan for the past. This is likely the result of the default way people think about it. For most, the past is objective and set. “It” happened, and the recorded history of whatever “it” was primarily takes care of itself. Organizations might benefit from a department of retrospective planning to take a more strategic view of the past. In the office of retrospective planning, historical events and moments would be assembled to explain current realities. The past would become a more dynamic source of information for understanding. To a degree, societies do this already. Major events are, when needed, recontextualized with focus given to various points that are needed for the current situations. Organizations, as societies, need the same dynamism regarding their past. Retrospective planning is a neglected aspect of organizational theory. Interestingly, retrospective planning has been so long neglected, as a review of an organizational archive revealed that the need for this type of strategic engagement was identified in 1952. #### Related Items [[Planning]] [[Strategy]] [[Time]] [[Organization]] [[Storytelling]] [[Past]]